Jackson has higher homeownership rates than most places (94th percentile) and a higher percentage business ownership (59th percentile). ![]() It’s also worth speculating on seemingly obvious reason why some cities, like Jackson, Miss., don’t post higher rates than 72.6. where Montgomery is the county seat, Black life expectancy is 68.5. People who hold this perspective contend that America is a level playing field and that with effort, Black people can achieve anything a white person can.īut locales that post life expectancies under 70 perform poorly on environment or institutional indicators like the air and school quality, suggesting that life is harder in some places due to systemically racist forces. That said, we still need to examine and throw away the overly optimistic position on race relations-that the country has moved beyond slavery, Jim Crow racism, and the array of discriminatory policies and their long-term effects. In places like Montgomery County, Md., individuals, civil rights groups, organizers, and politicians are dismantling the architecture of inequality that takes away years of life. The diversity of places where Black people are thriving suggests that it has something to do with Black people themselves. When we take an overly optimistic or pessimistic view of the state of Black America and treat Black people as a monolith, we don’t see localized stories of growth, determination, and thriving. The fact that we realize progress and stagnation in Black life expectancy in different places makes clear that people have agency. More research is needed to uncover the conditions and behaviors underlying all the variables that strongly influence life expectancy. We also know that place-based bias that comes out of the wash of housing devaluation hurts the families and institutions, including churches, in those locales. Church goers are more likely to be obese and, on the surface, asking “Jesus to take the wheel” may negate any agency we have in influencing our health outcome. The challenge is understanding why religious adherence is associated with lower life expectancy. Revoking a church membership will not automatically add years to a person’s life. Keeping in mind all the social determinants that showed to be significant in our study are correlational, not causal. On the other end of the spectrum, a surprising predictor of low Black life expectancy is religious membership. Though, this data points to a larger question: Is less exposure to U.S. The cause for this interpretation is unclear it may be a pure composition effect, in that foreign-born Black Americans enjoy better health than the native Black population. The more than 43% of Black residents of King’s County who are immigrants, places it in the 98th percentile among all counties. is in the 89th percentile of life expectancy at 78.5. One standard deviation above the mean in this variable adds one year to predicted life Black expectancy. Others were more surprising, including the top predictor of high Black life expectancy: larger shares of foreign-born Black residents. Using a common machine-learning algorithm to select variables and rank their importance, the Index identifies 13 social conditions that predict Black life expectancy. Many are those one might expect, such as income, education, housing, and family composition. ![]() Our current life expectancy data suggest that people are breaking down specific social conditions that influence longevity, giving real reason for optimism. What accounts for such vast differences? Life expectancy, a cumulative measure of health and well-being, summarizes both the biological and non-biological influences on our lives. Because race is a sociological construct and not a biological one, we should assume disparities in life expectancy represent differences in non-biological influences on our lives. Read More: Why John Lewis Kept Telling the Story of Civil Rights, Even Though It Hurt
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |